The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
East Riding of Yorkshire (now)
Parish church
Scorborough is a hamlet in the East Riding of Yorkshire, about 4 miles N of Beverley. The church is by J. L. Pearson, built 1857-1859 to replace what Pevsner described as ‘a mean brick building’ (Pevsner and Neave, 1995, 671). Quiney considered it ‘among the great monuments of Victorian church building, not just in the East Riding, but in England as a whole.’ (Quiney, 1984, 29) It has a nave and chancel, and a large W tower. Outside is a font standing on what was once a pier base.
Parish church
The church stands on a small but prominent hill in the middle of a large village and overlooking an extensive pond. There is a W tower, aisled nave and chancel (Pevsner and Neave 1995, 618-9).
Most of the structure is later than our period, but the chancel arch has been refashioned from a Romanesque original, and there is a splendid cylindrical font.
Parish church
Londesborough village is on a south-facing slope of the scarp face of the Wolds, about two miles N of Market Weighton. The site probably related to the course of the Roman road from the Humber to Malton, but is now far from traffic.
The church is on a natural rise within the churchyard.
The church comprises W tower, nave with N aisle, a S porch, and a chancel with a N chapel (Pevsner and Neave, 1995, 601-602). Plans in faculty papers (Borthwick Fac. 1875/5) suggest a 12thc. church with a nave and W tower. Its chancel cannot be traced. Much of the church is built of small pieces of a Jurassic stone.
Restoration is not too extensive, and the memorials of the successive landowning families do not dominate the interior.
The only Romanesque feature is the S doorway with its tympanum. Details on the c. 1200 N arcade recall earlier forms.
Parish church
The church has a nave, a chancel and S chapel; the nave is unusually low between the tower and the high-roofed chancel. The fabric, as well as the shape, is very mixed, with a good deal of brickwork patching, and the general effect is light-hearted. The chancel arch, cut away in medieval times, has its odd space complemented by a Victorian screen. The S chapel is also known as the Constable chapel due to the fact it was restored by Rev. Charles Constable of Wassan in 1851, but it commemorates the De Mauleys family. Around its walls there is a pattern of armorials, and the focus is a beautifully painted monument to a Stuart lady. The S doorway was unblocked in the 1893 restoration; the W doorway was blocked and turned into a window. The W end of the church was not accessible at the time of visit. The S doorway, the remains of the chancel arch, the N wall of the nave and some Norman stringcourse, both inside and outside, are Romanesque. The font is possibly 12thc, although not very typical.
Parish church
The church has a varied fabric: boulders from glacial deposits, and medieval brick with stone dressings. It is mostly 15thc, with an aisled nave, a choir and a W tower.
There is a small round-headed priest’s doorway, and fragments of more certainly dated twelfth-century reset in the tower. The N and S arcades, although pointed, have details of 12th-century type.
Parish church
Extensive external rendering on this church makes it initially unprepossessing, but, as Pevsner said, the interior is a great surprise, with several surviving Romanesque elements. The church was restored in the 1840s.
The 12thc carved features are the chancel arch; reused voussoirs on the S doorway, and reset beakheads elsewhere. In addition, there are remains of simple splayed windows in the S wall of the nave – visible on the interior – and in the N wall of the chancel, and a plain blank arch, rather wide for a tower doorway, in the W wall of the nave, to the N of the tower arch.
Parish church
Sledmere is a village about seven miles NW of Driffield. The church consists of a sandstone ashlar building of a chancel with a N vestry, an aisled nave, a W tower and a S porch. The church interior has delicate screens of wood and metal, and pink stone. The present nave and chance were built in 1893-8 and replace an 18thc church, which itself had replaced the medieval structure, enlarged in the 14thc. A range of plans and early views are displayed in the church, but no structure of our period has survived. As Pevsner and Neave (1995), 692, say, in the late 19thc ‘the church was rebuilt on the lines of the medieval building which were discovered on the demolition of the Georgian nave and chancel’. Remains of Romanesque sculpture consist of a series of corbels in the chamber above organ and a fragment reset into the tower arch.
Parish church
Skirpenbeck is a village about ten miles E of York. The church lies to the E of the village and consists of coursed rubble with freestone dressings building of a nave and a chancel with a ‘brick churchwarden tower’ (Morris 1919, 285) at the W end, added in the 18thc; the S porch in stone and the N vestry were built during the 19thc. Restorations were carried out during the Victorian period (Borthwick Faculty 1893/25). Remains of Romanesque sculpture include the S doorway to the nave, the chancel arch and the font with arcading.
Parish church
This is a church without a tower, standing isolated in a ring of trees, south of its village across the main east-west road. When it was built, it was near the Humber, but reclamation means it is now 5km or more away (VCHER V, 148, with map). It has a nave, chancel, rebuilt south aisle and a south chapel now used as a vestry, with a compact, almost domestic, late medieval interior. Morris 1919, 331, says ‘well-restored’, the architect was Temple Moore (Borthwick Institute, Faculty papers 1888/7; plan in Miller 1937, 183; Pevsner and Neave 1995, 756).
Miller 1937, following James Raine, associates the unusual dedications at Winestead (St Germain) and Patrington (St Patrick) to a ‘Culdee’ mission. Ingram (no date) mentions visits of Germain, bishop of Auxerre, to Britain in the 5th century, as recorded by Bede, and suggests an early Christian settlement at Winestead. Selby Abbey was dedicated to St Mary and St Germanus, following the arrival of a monk from Auxerre in the Norman period. Pevsner and Neave 1995, 756, use the shortening 'St German'; the Diocesan Directory gives the dedication as 'St Germain'.
The north and south walls of the twelfth-century chancel remain and, of the nave, the north wall and part of the west walls are of the Romanesque period. These walls are 5ft (1.5m) thick according to Miller, and of ‘late Norman or Transitional date’ according to the architect, Temple Moore, 1895, 85. The corbels on the south wall of the chancel were found in the walls at the restoration, and their original positions cannot be known. ‘Pieces of round-headed windows, with engaged shaft, like the one in the north wall of Halsham, and a fragment of an arch with zigzag ornament’ mentioned by Miller (1937, 181) were not found, nor were they known to the churchwarden. From the wording, these could have been loose pieces, as they are contrasted with the ‘built in’ corbels.
Parish church
St Laurence is a large and complex church, which appears to be mostly from the 15thc. It has a chancel with N and S chapels and a vestry; N and S aisles to the nave; former chantries in the N and S transepts; remnants of a Consistory Court at the W end; and a tower above. The tower was added in the 13thc, with an additional bay at the W end of the 12thc nave.
Restoration 1868-9.
The only 12thc work previously recorded at this church are passages of walling in the transepts, and the W responds of the N and S arcades at the bay before the tower. The previously unrecorded corbels reused at the top of the tower are very worn. The tower was presumably updated in late medieval times with the battlements, so the date of reuse is not clear. There are about 50 12thc corbels, probably from the nave. The original corbels have the dimensions (a head-width) and form (cavetto) of 12thc corbels. The quoins of this course are not 12thc, but they are made of one extra large stone, at times with three carved heads - one on each face of the tower and one on the angle. These carvings have not survived in a good condition either.